In 1930, Rouault published Cirque with text by André Suarès (1868–1948). Eight years later, he and his ambitious dealer, Ambroise Vollard, planned a much grander, truly deluxe artist’s book. Between 1930 and 1938, the artist made a large number of new illustrations, wood engravings as well as lift-ground aquatints, utilizing complicated coloring schemes involving multiple printing plates. Rouault collaborated with several artists and masterprinters in order to recreate the painterly effects of his preparatory watercolor drawings, such as Portrait of a Clown. Rouault wrote his own text just as Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger would do for their books, Jazz and Cirque respectively. Rouault’s text was far from lighthearted. Like Picasso he associated circus performers and their trials of poverty and social isolation with the suffering experienced by visual artists.